Helena Rubinstein used guile, brilliant branding, and more than a few falsehoods to lift cosmetics from an accessory for prostitutes to a desired luxury item. Geoffrey Jones reveals her history.
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After a lengthy courting process, Amazon thought its plan for a New York HQ campus was in the bag. But the company failed a primary goal of negotiations, says James Sebenius.
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Much has been written about Henry Kissinger the diplomat and United States secretary of state, but surprisingly little about Kissinger the dealmaker. A trio of Harvard scholars remedies that with Kissinger the Negotiator: Lessons from Dealmaking at the Highest Level. Co-author James Sebenius discusses what business negotiators can learn.
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Sophisticated international negotiators don't just do a number of separate deals, hoping that they somehow add up to the ultimate result; instead, they design and wage carefully structured "negotiation campaigns." As the USSFTA case illustrates, it is useful in complex, multiparty situations for negotiators to think in terms of multifront campaigns that must combine to generate enough support for ultimate target agreements. The authors of this paper further outline steps involved in orchestrating a successful negotiation campaign.
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This paper describes three of the most pivotal negotiations of statesman, scholar, and public intellectual Henry A. Kissinger, born in 1923 to a German Jewish family in Fuerth. These negotiations include the historic establishment of United States diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China, the easing of geopolitical tension with the Soviet Union, and the mediation of the agreement on Sinai disengagement between Egypt and Israel. Additionally, the authors of this paper provide a brief summary of Kissinger's biography and career as well as an appendix of his involvement in other important diplomatic negotiations. In a forthcoming paper, the authors will examine these and other major events in which Henry Kissinger played leading roles in order to extract their most important insights into the principles and practice of effective negotiation. Key concepts include: Henry Kissinger played key roles in many important diplomatic negotiations. This paper outlines three in depth. Throughout his time as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, Kissinger exerted a strong influence on American foreign policy. In tandem with working for détente with the Soviet Union, he played a central role in helping to end 23 years of diplomatic isolation and mutual suspicion between the United States and China as well as, after the 1973 Yom Kippur war, to orchestrate disengagement agreements between Egypt and Israel as well as Syria and Israel.
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While most of us focus on our own interests in negotiation, our counterparts are more likely to say "yes" to a proposal if it meets their interests. Frequently, their interests entail satisfying, or at least not annoying, their "behind the table" constituencies. These may include a boss, board, investor group, spouse, client, union membership, community group, NGO, political party, or the US Senate that must ratify the treaty that negotiators prepare on behalf of the President. The author of this paper argues that a potent barrier to success in negotiation is often the prospect that your or the other side's constituents will reject the deal. While most negotiators are highly sensitive to their own constituencies, they tend to pay far less attention to the other side's constituents: "that's their problem. Let them solve it." Yet one low-cost way for negotiators to advance their own interests can be help the other side solve its internal constituency problems—in a manner consistent with each both side's interests. Sophisticated negotiators have been amazingly inventive in coming up with practical and highly valuable approaches to this often‐unexplored challenge. This paper develops and illustrates several such approaches. Key concepts include: Many negotiators experience the effect of constituencies that must formally or informally approve an agreement. In negotiation, Level II challenges are the other side's internal or "behind-the-table" dilemmas. Even where Level II parties do not have formal ratification power, they may often facilitate the implementation of agreements that they like and effectively block those that they do not. Negotiators can meet their own interests by helping the other side resolve its Level II dilemmas. There are several categories of practical measures that negotiators can use to advance their own interests by focusing on the other side's Level II negotiations.
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While most of us focus on our own interests in negotiation, our counterparts are more likely to say "yes" to a proposal if it meets their interests. Frequently, their interests entail satisfying, or at least not annoying, their "behind the table" constituencies. These may include a boss, board, investor group, spouse, client, union membership, community group, NGO, political party, or the United States Senate that must ratify the treaty that negotiators prepare on behalf of the President. The author of this paper argues that a potent barrier to success in negotiation is often the prospect that your or the other side's constituents will reject the deal. While most negotiators are highly sensitive to their own constituencies, they tend to pay far less attention to the other side's constituents: "that's their problem. Let them solve it." Yet one low-cost way for negotiators to advance their own interests can be help the other side solve its internal constituency problems-in a manner consistent with each both side's interests. Sophisticated negotiators have been amazingly inventive in coming up with practical and highly valuable approaches to this often‐unexplored challenge. This paper develops and illustrates several such approaches. Key concepts include: Many negotiators experience the effect of constituencies that must formally or informally approve an agreement. In negotiation, Level II challenges are the other side's internal or "behind-the-table" dilemmas. Even where Level II parties do not have formal ratification power, they may often facilitate the implementation of agreements that they like and effectively block those that they do not. Negotiators can meet their own interests by helping the other side resolve its Level II dilemmas. There are several categories of practical measures that negotiators can use to advance their own interests by focusing on the other side's Level II negotiations.
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Tommy Koh is a diplomat, professor, and international lawyer currently serving as Ambassador-at-Large for the Government of Singapore. He will be the 2014 recipient of the Harvard Program on Negotiation's "Great Negotiator Award." In this paper, the authors discuss Koh's life, career, and major accomplishments as a negotiator. They summarize several of his most significant negotiations to date, exploring his successes at forging creative, lasting solutions to complex challenges and disputes. The authors discuss Koh's leadership in establishing the United States-Singapore Free Trade Agreement (USSFTA), developing and ratifying a charter for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), resolving territorial and humanitarian disputes in the Baltics and Asia, and successfully leading two unprecedented global megaconferences: the Third U.N. Conference on the Law of the Sea and the U.N. Conference on the Environment and Development, also known as the Earth Summit. As part of the 2014 Great Negotiator Awards program, negotiation faculty and students will analyze several of these experiences in much greater depth in order to extract their most valuable lessons for theory and practice. Key concepts include: A native of Singapore, Koh's early interest in law and diplomacy led to his appointment as the youngest ambassador in the history of the United Nations. As a representative of Singapore and the United Nations, Koh has been instrumental in crafting creative agreements on complex matters of international law, environmental policy, trade, and dispute resolution. Koh's chairmanship of two global environmental megaconferences resulted in unprecedented treaties on resource allocation, human and environmental rights, and international law. Koh's successes demonstrate a profound ability to produce durable and adaptive solutions in response to a significant and noteworthy array of challenges, from international trade agreements to the restructuring of regional and global political organizations, the resolution of territorial and humanitarian crises, normalization of bilateral diplomatic relations, and the ratification of global environmental legislation.
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Many situations make it important to productively synchronize "internal" with "external" negotiations. In fact, much research to date has focused on how each side can best manage its internal opposition to agreements negotiated "at the table." Often implicit in this research is the view that each side's leadership is best positioned to manage its own internal conflicts. Traditionally, a negotiator does this by 1) pressing for deal terms that will meet its internal objections, and 2) effectively "selling" the agreement to its key constituencies. However, James Sebenius argues that to achieve your own goals in negotiation it is also vital to understand all the ways in which you can help the other side with the its "behind-the-table" barriers (and vice versa). Independent of any altruistic motives, helping them to solve "their internal negotiation problem" is often the best way to get them to say yes to an agreement that is in your interest. To do this, negotiators should explicitly probe the full set of the other party's interests including the other side's interest in dealing effectively with its internal, behind-the-table challenges and conflicts. This requires you to deeply probe the context in which they are enmeshed: the web of favorable and opposing constituencies as well as their relationships, perceptions, sensitivities, and substantive interests. By way of a number of challenging case examples, this paper details a number of ways to develop this fuller understanding and to act effectively on it. Key concepts include: Each side can help the other side with its internal conflicts. One side can help the other side by, for example, the form of the negotiating process (to send a useful signal to constituencies); by avoiding (or making) statements that inflame (or mollify) the other side's internal opponents; by constructive actions at the bargaining table informed by knowledge of the other side's internal conflicts; by acting to directly affect the other side's internal situation; and so on. The term "Level II" comes from Robert Putnam (1988), who developed the concept of "two level games" in the context of diplomacy and domestic politics. In Putnam's conception, "Level I" games focus on traditional diplomatic agreements, while "Level II" games focus on the formal or informal domestic ratification of such agreements. Sebenius extends the meaning beyond diplomacy to focus on Level II domestic constituencies or other internal factions-whether in the public or private spheres-that can support or block "across the table" agreements. Level II factions frequently act on behalf of small but influential minority interests.
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What happens when you encounter a company with a great deal of power, like Wal-Mart, that is also the ultimate non-negotiable partner? A series of Harvard Business School cases by James Sebenius and Ellen Knebel explore successful deal-making strategies. From the HBS Alumni Bulletin.
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"Negotiation is increasingly a way of life for effective managers," say HBS professor James Sebenius and colleague David Lax. Their new book, 3-D Negotiation, describes how you can shape important deals through tactics, deal design, and set-up, and why three dimensions are more powerful than one. Here's a Q&A and book excerpt. Key concepts include: Three-D negotiation comprises tactics, deal design, and set-up. Their use depends on the nature of the barriers you face. A 3-D strategy is an aligned combination of set-up moves that occur away from the table, deal design moves, and tactics at the table, all designed to overcome the barriers you've identified. The best response to a barrier in one dimension may be moves within other dimensions.
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"When you map a negotiation backward, you envision your preferred outcome and think in reverse about how to get there," says Harvard Business School professor and negotiation specialist James K. Sebenius. From Negotiation.
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A deal can unravel quickly if it doesn’t embody the mutual understanding—the social contract—behind the words on paper. The risk factors surrounding negotiation are detailed in this Harvard Business Review excerpt, co-authored by HBS professor James K. Sebenius.
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Myriad factors can make or break a deal, according to Harvard Business School professor James K. Sebenius. As he explains in this excerpt from Harvard Business Review, the "web of influence" in many countries is more important than meets the eye.
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What turns merely effective negotiators into all-out expert negotiators? The ability to overcome six common mistakes, according to HBS professor James K. Sebenius. In this excerpt from the Harvard Business Review, he describes one of the most glaring.
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How does a master negotiator negotiate? HBS Professor James Sebenius, founder of the school's Negotiation Unit, frames options in such a way that "what you choose in your perceived interest is, in fact, what I want." How does he accomplish this? Through what he calls "three-dimensional negotiation:" persuasion at the bargaining table; delving into the deeper interests that underlie the parties' positions; and a studied determination of whether to take the deal on the table or to walk away.
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